The Ventura Regional Sanitation District board Thursday agreed to place on a future agenda questions raised about the compensation of Mark Norris, district manager of the Triunfo and Saticoy sanitation districts.

Norris, 59, is under contract with the regional sanitation district, which provides the Triunfo and Saticoy districts with management and operational support.

In public comments at the regional board’s meeting, David Grau, board chairman of the Ventura County Taxpayers Association, charged that Norris last month became the highest-paid public servant in the county.

Grau said the board approved a 50 percent increase in Norris’ contract, raising his annual compensation to $300,000 a year from $200,000 a year.

“Most of those costs will be passed on to two small districts and their ratepayers,” he said.

But Mark Lawler, general manager of the regional sanitation district, said the board did not approve a 50 percent increase. Rather, members extended Norris’ independent-contractor agreement for another fiscal year, paying him the same $110 an hour with no benefits, not to exceed $300,000. That’s the same cap he had in fiscal year 2012-13, Lawler said.

Despite the $300,000 limit, Norris wasn’t paid nearly that much in the past fiscal year, which ended June 30, Lawler said. Through May, Norris had billed the district $212,000, said Lawler, who expects Norris to bill the district about $230,000 this fiscal year.

Norris, a former Oxnard assistant public works director who began working for the regional sanitation district in January 2012, said the district wants him to work more hours this fiscal year. In addition to his work for the Triunfo and Saticoy districts, he said he also works for the regional district’s Toland landfill outside Santa Paula.

“Certainly this $300,000 a year is an overstatement,” Norris said. “There is no way that I’ll ever get close to that. It would be impossible at my hourly rate.”

Still, Norris said Grau’s concerns “are valid questions, and the district is in the process of responding to them.”

Janna Orkney, a Triunfo district board member, told the regional board that Norris does an “outstanding job” for her agency.

Even so, she said, she had some transparency concerns.

“What is VRSD charging us for his services?” she said in an interview. “It’s real murky.”

But Lawler said it’s perfectly clear. The Triunfo district is charged $126 an hour for Norris’ services, which equals a 15 percent markup of his $110 an hour wage to cover the regional district’s overhead for the office space he uses, Lawler said.

“These numbers have been presented and approved by their board,” he said.

The concerns about Norris’ compensation could be on the agenda for the regional board’s Sept. 5 meeting.